HOLY INNOCENTS

Reflecting on today’s readings and feast day I thought I would check how many abortions occurred in the United States in 2018.  I checked at 9:27 last night and the death toll was 1,079,726 and continues to rise.  It is believed that approximately every 29 seconds there yet another innocent life lost. 

This past October Judy and I participated in the 40 days of life prayer vigil outside a local abortion clinic.  When we arrived, there was a group there, we weren’t sure it was our group, but we greeted each other with Christian kindness.  Then one member of the group took up the microphone and began to chastise the women coming into the clinic.  For a moment I thought about leaving thinking, how are we going to change hearts is we publicly condemn the women coming to the clinic?  We finally figured out it was not our parish group, but I did take note of the expression on the women’s faces as they came into the clinic.  Their faces were set like flint.  Their minds made up and nothing we could say was going to change their minds.  I realized then, we need to get to them sooner.  I also witnessed their expressions as they drove away from the clinic.  There was a sense of loss and sorrow, they know what they did and I would venture they felt some guilt for the loss of an innocent life.

Others innocents come into our lives through the television set and the computer screen: refugee children fleeing genocide, others dying of starvation, people risking their lives on flimsy rafts to cross the Mediterranean Sea, men, women, and children escaping corruption and violence as they struggle to cross our border into the land of the free. Their only mistake, being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. These are the Holy Innocents of our day, pursued by the Herods of our world.  Modern media will not allow us to wall them out of our consciousness.

Long ago, the Child of Bethlehem was one of them.  He came to save the world, but he had to get out of town to escape a power system that could not accept him.  “Our ancestors were unwilling to obey him; instead, they pushed him aside and, in their hearts, turned back to Egypt.” (Act 7:39 NABRE) He was a threat to the movers and shakers. Eventually he would not hide from those who sought to annihilate him and what he stood for.  Like an innocent lamb, he died as a criminal on a cross.

Innocents still face annihilation. Even before birth, they are hounded.  And if they manage to get born, they are not welcomed.  The sins against the Holy Innocents cry out to heaven. We must find ways to reverse the heartless cruelty—not by condemnation—but rather through our prayers, through formation of conscience by what and how we communicate our values for the dignity of all people from conception to natural death and through our merciful and compassionate actions.  We must learn how to set today’s Innocents free from the snare, to bring the Christ Child back from exile in Egypt.